Conventional engine-powered locomotors, such as, for example, but without limitation, automobiles, trucks, heavy construction and earth-moving equipment, railroad locomotives and ships and boats large and small, all employ some form of gasoline, diesel or natural-gas fueled internal combustion engine to generate kinetic energy.
In automobiles, for example the kinetic energy of a fossil-fuel engine is normally collected in a rotating crankshaft and fed to a transmission. The automobile driver controls a throttle and the transmission in turn provides the user-controlled motive power.
Among the huge disadvantages in the conventional fossil-fuel based motive power systems are (1) dependence on increasingly expensive non-renewable fossil fuels as a primary source of energy; (2) unavoidable emission of carbon dioxide as a combustion by-product; and (3) unavoidable enormous waste of the chemical energy of the fossil fuel in the form of heat (every heat engine has a radiator or some other form of heat dissipation means. The heat energy unavoidably dissipated by heat engines constitutes waste of a substantial portion of the energy original contained within the fuel being consumed).
For example, it has been estimated that for gasoline engines at peak efficiency, only about 22% of the chemical energy stored in the gasoline gets turned into crankshaft kinetic energy. The remaining 78% of the energy is wasted, chiefly in the form of heat.
Failure to quickly remove waste heat from an internal combustion engine will result in overheating and engine destruction due to seize-up. Thus, internal combustion engines are mechanically required to be fitted with radiators. Not only does a heat radiator dissipate perhaps 78% of the energy of gasoline, but the radiator system itself, with its coolant pumps, belts and pulleys creates its own energy demand upon the engine crankshaft. This requires an engine of large enough capacity to run the coolant system while still supplying sufficient kinetic energy to the vehicle transmission.
Diesel engines have been said to achieve peak thermal efficiencies in the range of 45% [i.e., 45% of the chemical energy of the diesel fuel is translated into useable kinetic energy].
In contrast, the present invention does not employ a heat engine at all to power a locomotor. Instead, it employs a rotary-torque pneumatic engine wherein the torque is developed by furnishing a supply of compressed gas to the pneumatic engine, preferably pre-compressed nitrogen. The compressed gas enters the engine's rotary chambers, where it is permitted to force the pneumatic engine to rotate. The rotation is conventionally captured by a drive shaft that is connected conventionally to whatever application is desired. For example, the drive shaft may be connected to a transmission and drive train of a conventional locomotor motor vehicle, or car.
Among the novel features of the present invention is that the source of energy for motive power is brought aboard the mechanical locomotion device in the form of one or more canisters of compressed nitrogen gas. The potential energy has already been stored in the canisters by the fact of the compression, because energy was needed to compress the nitrogen gas to get it into the canisters in the first place.
Turning the stored energy inherent in the compressed gas into useable kinetic energy simply requires conveying the compressed gas by pipe or conduit from its storage canisters, feeding it to one or more pressure regulators to reduce its pressure appropriate for feeding into the rotary pneumatic energy, and finally allowing the regulated and thus lowered-pressure compressed gas to drive the pneumatic engine. In the present invention's pneumatic rotary engine no heat is required to be generated to derive the required motive power, as compared to internal combustion engines, where heat generation and heat waste cannot be avoided.
An additional novel feature of the present invention is that employing it for motive power leaves absolutely no or a very small carbon footprint, compared to the substantial carbon foot print of conventional fossil fuel powered mechanical locomotion devices. A so-called carbon footprint is the term used to describe machines or processes that emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The energy required to compress the pre-compressed nitrogen gas used to power the rotary pneumatic motor of the present invention may be harvested from various renewable sources, at least in part. Thus, producing the compressed gas needed for the present invention could result indirectly in a carbon footprint, but it is one that will be smaller than the carbon footprint resulting from conventional fossil fuel transportation.
The preferred nitrogen gas for use with the present invention comprises 78% of the earth's atmosphere and it is non toxic and not dangerous. It cannot burn or support combustion and is chemically so stable that it is almost inert. Nitrogen is available inexhaustibly from the atmosphere, and will be directly returned to the atmosphere once it is decompressed upon exhaustion from the rotary pneumatic motor of the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,349,787 of Dakhill describes a motor for vehicles which uses liquid nitrogen, not gaseous nitrogen, and the liquid nitrogen is costly energy-wise, because it requires heating and depleting the liquid nitrogen. Additionally the engine of Dakhill is a turbine type, not a rotary engine.
In this manner the earth's atmosphere will be not be disturbed or polluted either thermally or chemically by use of the present invention. Since the atmosphere is thermally disturbed and chemically polluted by dumping of waste heat and carbon dioxide from conventional internal combustion engines. The present invention thus contributes an immediate large-scale alternative to fossil fuel based transportation while addressing global warming by substantially terminating the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as a result of transportation activities.
However, transportation is not the only field in which internal combustion or fossil fuel combustion may be replaced by a compressed-gas-driven rotary pneumatic motor. Also eligible for the improvement in energy efficiency, the substantial elimination of carbon dioxide emissions, reduction in cost of energy are such fields as structural heating, ventilation and air conditioning [HVAC] by means of individually-sited electrical generators operated by on-site by rotary pneumatic motors. As such, the invention takes the form of embodiment Number 3, described above, whereby a closed nitrogen closed gas system, and the resulting electrical power realized thereby may be used for all conventional energy needs typically serviced by large electrical power plants. For example, the large AC output can by used for industrial space heating, electrical-heat cooking and so forth. The present invention in embodiment No. 3 is capable of application to any scale of HVAC, for example including, without limitation, residential, commercial, industrial and governmental AC power generation needs. All of the heat energy and kinetic energy requirements of industrial applications may be met using present invention of embodiments Numbers 1, 2 and 3, or in any combination thereof.